The present invention relates to a control apparatus for an air conditioner of an automobile (hereinafter referred to as an air conditioner), and more particularly to an improvement of such a control apparatus in which means for selecting an operation mode of the air conditioner includes means for electrically processing signals.
The air conditioner is used under any weather conditions and hence it has a mode of cooling/warming selection as well as other operation modes such as ventilation, dehydration, defrosting of the windshield, selection of an exit of cool or warm air, and selection of fresh and recirculation air.
The mode selection in such an apparatus is carried out by manipulating levers and/or dials of a dash control box mounted in a dash board. When a lever is moved to a position where a desired mode is indicated, a movable contact interlocked with the lever contacts with a stationary contact to complete an electric circuit so that one or more control elements in the air conditioner are actuated by drive means energized by the electric circuit in order to select the desired mode.
In the prior art mode selection device, the electric closed circuits which are equal in number to the number of modes are required. Consequently, electric wires which are equal in number to the number of modes must be distributed over a long distance from the dash control box to the drive means. Therefore, when the number of modes is to be increased, the number of electric wires increases and the volume of the electric wires causes the volume of the control box to increase and the workability in the mounting operation of the control box is deteriorated.